Biden administration pushes long-term aviation funding report to FY-23

摘要

The Defense Department is punting on a new statutory requirement to prepare an annual aviation inventory and funding plan aligned with the National Defense Strategy, citing the Biden administration's deliberate decision to prepare a fiscal year 2022 budget request without the traditional accompanying future year spending plan. Meanwhile, the Pentagon plans to prepare a report to deliver to Congress next year along with the FY-23 budget request that will provide a detailed 15-year plan for aircraft acquisition. "Given the executive branch's decision that the President's Budget (PB) 2022 would only include FY-22 budget data and no [Future Years Defense Program] data, an FY-22 plan would only have included FY-22 investments and therefore would not have differed significantly from the FY-22 budget submission," Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told Inside Defense. "The PB for FY-23, this administration's first full budget, will provide the basis to update aircraft procurement plans and provide a detailed 15-year plan and FYDP certification." The original requirement for a report on overarching DOD aviation plans was proposed by the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2008 as part of its mark of the FY-09 defense policy bill. The report was typically more than 30 pages and cost the Defense Department about $1 million to produce annually. It included discussions of aviation force-structure requirements, investment objectives, a budget certification and "sufficiency of forces assessment." In an effort to relieve the Defense Department of a number of statutory reporting requirements, the FY-17 National Defense Authorization Act adopted a provision proposed by the House Armed Services Committee to eliminate the annual report on the military services' aircraft inventory.